Ethan Frome, a novella by Edith Wharton, written in 1911, offers a veritable banquet of desolation, seasoned with a dash of New England frigidity and garnished with just a sprig of hope, promptly withered. It’s the literary equivalent of being snowed in with nothing but biscuits and existential dread. And yet, within its chilling confines, Wharton crafts a masterclass in character study and environmental determinism.
Wharton’s Starkfield, Massachusetts, is less a setting and more a sentient being intent on sucking the marrow out of its inhabitants. The perpetual winter is practically a character itself, its icy fingers tightening around the throat of the narrative, leaving both characters and readers gasping for warmth. Starkfield’s oppressive atmosphere reflects the bleakness of Ethan’s life, ensuring that any spark of joy is quickly extinguished by a gust of frigid wind. This is no quaint, snow-globe New England; it’s a place where dreams go to freeze and die.
Ethan Frome, our titular tragic hero, is a man of few words and even fewer options. His taciturn nature makes him the perfect vessel for the town’s collective misery. It’s hard to say whether Ethan was born unlucky or if Starkfield’s crushing grip moulded him into the avatar of despair he becomes. One can’t help but marvel at how Wharton imbues a man who says so little with such depth, though it’s akin to marveling at the intricate design of a straitjacket.
Zeena, Ethan’s hypochondriac wife, is less a person and more a spectre of all that is wrong in Ethan’s world. Her sickly presence looms large, a constant reminder of the life of duty and drudgery Ethan cannot escape. Zeena’s ailments, real or imagined, are the chains that bind Ethan to his hapless existence. She is a master class in passive-aggressive tyranny, a puppet master whose strings are made of a doctor’s prescriptions and sighs of martyrdom.
Enter Mattie Silver, the glimmer of hope amidst the frost. She is everything Zeena is not: young, lively, and warm. It’s almost cruel how Wharton teases Ethan (and the reader) with the possibility of happiness, only to reveal that in Starkfield, even hope has an expiration date. Mattie’s presence is a catalyst for Ethan’s brief rebellion against his fate, though it’s a rebellion as doomed as a snowman in July.
Wharton’s novella is rife with symbolism, often so heavy-handed that one might need a snowplow to navigate it. The most prominent is, of course, the stark dichotomy between warmth and cold. Warmth represents life, hope, and the possibility of escape, while cold is synonymous with death, despair, and entrapment. The pickle dish, shattered during an evening of stolen intimacy between Ethan and Mattie, serves as a poignant metaphor for Ethan’s life: fragile, broken, and irreparable.
The theme of isolation pervades the novella. Ethan is isolated physically by Starkfield’s brutal winters, emotionally by his loveless marriage, and socially by his poverty and sense of duty. This isolation is mirrored in the landscape – vast, empty, and unforgiving.
Wharton employs a frame narrative, a technique that adds layers of distance between the reader and Ethan’s plight, much like the layers of ice encrusting Starkfield. The unnamed narrator, an outsider, pieces together Ethan’s story from fragments, giving the tale a piecemeal quality that enhances its sense of inevitability. This approach allows Wharton to maintain an air of mystery and inevitability, drawing readers inexorably toward the novella’s tragic conclusion.
Ethan Frome is not a feel-good read. It’s a bleak exploration of the human condition, where dreams are stifled by duty, love is thwarted by circumstance, and the only escape is through acts of desperation that lead to even greater entrapment. Wharton’s prose is as crisp as the Starkfield air, her characters as complex as the frost patterns on a windowpane. It’s a story that lingers, much like a New England winter – long, cold, and unrelenting.
In the end, Wharton’s brilliance lies in her ability to take the simplest of plots – a love triangle ensnared by circumstance – and elevate it to a study of human suffering and the unyielding force of environment. Ethan Frome may leave you feeling chilled to the bone, but it’s a chill worth experiencing.
Just a Buoy 